Brothers arrested in France after school mass killing threat

Police in eastern France on Saturday arrested two brothers in their 20s whom they suspect of being behind an online threat to stage a mass killing at a high school, officials said.

One of the suspects is believed to be the man who posted the threat from an Internet cafe, leading police to deploy across high schools in the eastern region of Strasbourg on Friday, a day after a gruesome suicide at a Paris primary school.

No other details on the suspects were immediately available.

Following the threat, 750 police officers deployed across 59 high schools that were placed on alert in the Strasbourg region.

On Thursday, a 50-year-old man with a history of family problems shot himself dead with a sawn-off shotgun in a Paris primary school near the Eiffel Tower, in front of about a dozen stunned children.

Police sources said the man, whose face was partly blown off, had apparently been depressed after separating from his wife in 2009. He had been a longtime resident of the neighbourhood and lived very close to the school.